Peshawar is presented as a strategic market in the wartime economy linking Pakistan and Afghanistan: a place where the demand for supplies could generate spectacular profits while goods intended for the fighting were withheld for later political advantage. The novel’s account reaches the city indirectly, through stories circulating among foreign opportunists in Karachi, and makes its warehouses emblematic of a war sustained not only by combat but by speculation and delay.

Border Trade and Wartime Demand

The border economy offered a market for contraband and black-market goods, collectively described as cash crops by the foreigners pursuing deals. Cigarettes, especially American brands, sold at the Khyber Pass for sixteen times their already inflated Karachi price. Medicines brought profits that grew from month to month, while winter clothing suited to mountain conditions was also highly marketable. Peshawar belonged to this network of supply and demand, where the needs created by the war invited traders to calculate what could be sold, and at what margin.

The scale of the trade is illustrated by a German opportunist who drove a truck of surplus German army alpine uniforms, including thermal underwear, thousands of kilometres from Germany to Pakistan. He sold both the clothing and the truck for five times their purchase value to an Afghan warlord backed by Western powers and agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency. The transaction made Peshawar’s wider wartime economy legible as a chain of extraordinary markups, connecting surplus military stock in Europe to the rival ambitions of Afghan power brokers.

The Warehouse and the Warlord’s Strategy

The uniforms never reached the Afghan mujaheddin fighting in the snow-covered mountains. Instead, the warlord stored them in a warehouse in Peshawar. He and his small army remained in the safety of fortress compounds in Pakistan rather than entering the fighting; his plan was to commit his troops to a bid for power after the war against the Russians had ended and victory had been won. The warehouse thus held more than clothing: it contained supplies removed from the immediate struggle and reserved for a future contest over power.

That decision exposes a sharp division between those enduring the war and those positioning themselves to benefit from its outcome. Winter uniforms had clear practical value to fighters in the mountains, yet the warlord’s forces preserved them as an asset for a later campaign. Peshawar’s significance in this episode lies in its role as a storage point within that strategy, where the distance between a commodity’s advertised purpose and its actual use becomes a political fact.

Peshawar in the Profiteers’ Imagination

In Karachi, the story of the German and his truck passed through the foreign opportunist community in several slightly different versions. News of a warlord with Central Intelligence Agency money and an appetite for supplies at any price set off speculative excitement. Traders pursued shipments of canned food, brushed-fleece clothing, engine parts, second-hand spirit stoves, and weapons ranging from bayonets to grenade launchers. Peshawar’s warehouse story circulated as evidence of the fortunes available to those who could secure a buyer and outlast the conflict.

The foreigners’ calculations depended on the war continuing: another year of fighting promised them riches. Against that feverish expectation, the unused uniforms in Peshawar sharpen the novel’s account of war profiteering. The city is not depicted through a sustained local scene; it enters the narrative as the place where supplies are withheld and where commercial success can serve a warlord’s postwar ambitions, even as the fighters for whom the goods were suited remain exposed to the cold.